Monday, August 17, 2009

In the cold depths of space...

I opened up my dashboard this morning to take a look-see at the headlines from around my favorite blogs and there seems to be quite a stir over...Space Hulk! I played Space Hulk back in the day (moreso than 1st edition 40k actually) and surprisingly I still have a lot of the floor tiles, the rulebooks, and a handful of the Terminators. It was a fun game, we got a lot of mileage out of it, but moved on. Now, as it would seem, it's back for more!

Now this. "Wow" is all I can say, I could almost go as far as saying I'm stunned. The board pieces look great, high quality and all that. The bulkheads, counter blips, and everything else look great too, then there's the minis (more of those in a minute). The real winner is how closely it resembles the original. In this day and age where every reboot and do-over ends up with a result that looks nothing like its predecessor, the new Space Hulk still looks like its retained the spirit of the old, if you squint just right, it is the old set.

Click to enlarge the goodness!

Looking at the large pic up top, you can see the figs included with the set are solid sculpts (maybe you peg on an arm or so) and made from a different kind of plastic than the stuff we've been using on the tabletop. Plastics have come a long way though, even "game piece" type sculpts as these, and painted up they look beautiful. Mind you, these are studio paint jobs, but I'm not too shabby, I feel I could give them a decent go at it.

One of the rumors was that a new marine chapter would be featured in the game, well no, these are clearly Blood Angels, which is cool. I'm no Blood Angel fan, but it's nice they're getting a little limelight here, it's also a nice detail to show the vampire fangs on Captain Lorenzo. Another rumor was the terminators would just be the stock ones out of the Black Reach box, again, nope, these are all new sculpts and look a thousand times more detailed and full of character. Maybe not poseable and such, but they look great.

The Genestealers steal the show, umm, no pun intended. Just look at them; climbing down bulkheads, leaping off structures...they finally embody the carapace-clacking, horror filled monsters lurking in the shadows on a long-dead, drifting ship.

It all sounds really good doesn't it? For those who didn't get in on it the first time, now's their chance. For those wishing to relive the fun of years past and gain a truly impressive looking reboot to a loved classic...hop on board. The game is a hundred bucks, and by today's standards that is not a bad price (I believe I paid sixty for the original). But where Games Workshop truly fails is that this new edition of Space Hulk is "while stocks last". That's right, this is a limited edition run, once it's gone, that's it, and the only place to get a copy will be off eBay at insulting prices. This, put ever so mildly, is quite disappointing.